Randolph Peters – 2012 Major Arts Grant

Winnipeg-born Randolph Peters has been a professional freelance composer for 34 years. He has written operas; symphonies; choral, chamber and dance music; as well as soundtracks for film, television, theatre and radio. Peters has served as Composer-in-Residence for both the Canadian Opera Company and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. He has collaborated with authors such as Robertson Davies, Margaret Atwood, and Salman Rushdie, amongst many others.

Peters will be engaged in the musical development and research towards a large work for orchestra and percussion . The new orchestral work will explore the stories and ideas from Oliver Sacks’ book Musicophilia – Tales of Music and the Brain and other recent developments in the study of music and neuroscience and create a resulting piece of music that will inspire us to hear music in new and startling ways. Peters intends to investigate the most interesting “conditions” that Oliver Sacks writes about in Musicophilia and turn them into movements of a longer piece.

What is the difference between an arts council and an arts council? ‘Arts Council’ means different things when naming different types of organizations. There are, essentially, two types of arts councils whose activities are primarily different but complementary.

MAC uses the peer assessment process to award most grants. That means that qualified artists and arts professionals make the funding decisions. If you are a professional artist in Manitoba you can participate in this process. It’s a great way to serve the community and to get an inside perspective on how awards are made.

If you happen to be an artist or a member of an arts organization, you’ve most likely worked diligently on assembling a grant application, painstakingly double-checking that all requirements from the guidelines have been met. You’ve managed to submit your grant application by its program deadline date – so, what exactly happens during the wait-time between submitting a grant application and finding out whether it has been awarded or declined?